945: TRADING and investing as an entrepreneur to GROW YOUR NET WORTH w/ Rod Casilli

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian Lofermento, and in today's episode, I feel like we are all going to get a giant push that we all need when it comes to actually having our money make us more money.

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As entrepreneurs, we love to work, we love to hustle, but we're not always the smartest when it comes to finances and investing and letting our money grow, just like we're not always the smartest when it comes to finances and investing and letting our money grow, just like we're obsessed with having our businesses grow.

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So we are bringing one of the best of the best in today's episode an incredible entrepreneur as well as a really incredible investor that not only is great at what he does, but he's great at helping others grow their money as well.

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So let me tell you all about today's guest.

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His name is Rod Casilli.

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Rod is the founder and lead trader at the Traders Dev Group.

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He's been an active futures trader and automated strategy designer for over 20 years.

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He began his career at Merrill Lynch during the tech speculation craze, spent time trading millions of shares of stock as an SOES bandit which he'll decipher all the financial lingo here in today's episode.

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And then he transitioned to the futures market in the fall of 1997, corresponding with the release of this S&P E-mini contract.

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Most recently he's moved beyond the screens into private equity, investing with a portfolio of over 10 companies, mostly consumer brands.

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And I think what's really cool is he has the firm belief that if you want to learn about this stuff, there's no other way to learn about it than to do it.

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So his business is incredible.

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We're going to get into all that and more.

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So I'm excited about this one.

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Let's dive straight into my interview with Rod Casilli.

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Rod, super excited to have you here on the air with us today.

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First things first, welcome to the show.

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Thank you so much.

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I hope I can live up to that bio.

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Heck, yeah Well there's certainly a lot to live up to, not only as a trader, but as an entrepreneur, let's start with the trading side.

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Obviously, you love finance, you love the world of investing.

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What sparked that passion for you?

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Yeah, I think what it was was just the uncertainty.

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So a lot of people are not wired for speculation because they don't like to venture into the unknown right.

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And in fact, the reason that a lot of people perceive active trading, or even actively investing as sort of a gamble is because they know that there's no guarantee that anything's going to work out.

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I actually fed into that and just love that.

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I had a couple of regular jobs early on.

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I was like I know exactly what my paycheck is going to be every couple of weeks.

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It just was not how I was wired.

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So initially I just love the concept of making the best decision you can within complete information, and I've been doing it ever since.

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Yeah, Rod, I think we honestly have to start there, because it's something that impacts the world of entrepreneurship, but also finance.

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It's two keywords.

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You already talked about active versus passive.

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Everyone's in the pursuit of this mythical passive income with regards to their business, but obviously a lot of it is.

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We have to pay attention to this stuff.

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What's your take on it?

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We've heard so many case studies through history of active investing portfolios versus passive.

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What's your take on it?

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We've heard so many case studies through history of active investing portfolios versus passive.

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What's your take on all that?

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I think it really has to do with your interest.

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I would never tell somebody that is really, really into their job and what they're doing or their entrepreneurial pursuit and doesn't really.

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They know they need to invest, but if it's not really their thing, a lot of the time they go to an advisor.

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So again, this is not financial advice.

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Look both ways before crossing the street.

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All that good stuff, but if you're not really into it, don't have a.

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I don't want to use the word passion, but if you just don't have an interest in it and you know you don't have an interest in it, you need to invest.

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Then it is passive.

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Just put money every single month into a Vanguard low cost index fund.

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You've heard that before.

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But just do it and do as much of it as you possibly can.

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And again, not financial advice.

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But if you actually are a high-income solo entrepreneur, there are a lot of good defined benefit plans and solo 401ks where you can sock a lot of money in and you make a bunch of money the moment you put it in there because you don't pay taxes on it.

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So it's really if you're not into and you and so it's really.

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If you're not into, you know it's not your thing, then just make sure you do it passively.

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But if you do like it and you care, and every once in a while you go, hey, I wonder what NVIDIA actually does.

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Or I'm interested in this, or I'm interested in that.

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Or I just bought this new clothing line and I saw that they were public.

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I have a case study for this myself with Lululemon.

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I had never been in a Lululemon before and decided to not invest, and once I started to wear their clothes, I just went hey, I'm just going to do it the old fashioned way and just invest in what I know.

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So if you do have an actual passion for it or interest in it, then you do want to spend some time and understand the skills associated with running your own investment portfolio, whether you do that with an advisor or just by yourself.

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If you're into it, you got to do it.

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If you're not, passive is the way to go.

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Yeah, rod, I want to ask you this question then, because obviously you and I chatted a little bit before we hit record here today and I somewhat shared with you that you are the gateway drug for a lot of our listeners, because I don't think we talk about investing a lot in the world of entrepreneurship, but it's partly to our downfall because we are hustlers.

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We love taking action.

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You're one of us, you're a fellow entrepreneur yourself, and we all have that work ethic which sometimes means that we make things harder than they should be.

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We love trying to go get more clients, we love growing our businesses, but we don't necessarily grow our net worth to go along with it.

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It's why I always I throw a little bit of shade when people want to talk about top line revenue numbers while ignoring the whole rest of the puzzle.

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How far would you go in saying that we all have that obligation?

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As we are growing as successful entrepreneurs, as successful business owners, how essential is it for us to start that investing focus as well?

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It's 100%.

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I mean there's nothing else I else I mean, unfortunately, what a lot of people do is is, once that money starts to really start to roll in, they go all to accounting and taxing.

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And how can I save on taxes and set up a swiss bank account or some sort of trust, and is this legal?

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Is that?

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And they go all taxing, tax, tax.

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I get a lot of that served in my social media feeds because it is of interest to me.

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We want to be able to protect our income, but before you start thinking about any of that, just make sure that you have a way that you understand.

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Look, you are an entrepreneur.

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You're investing all this time in your business and all this energy and with a lot of uncertainty especially when we're smaller entrepreneurs as to what the outcome will be when things start clicking and things start working.

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Just do what you naturally were doing with your own business Invest in other businesses.

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I chose to use again a very high risk approach, which is private equity, which is a small, non-public companies and a variety of different brands, and we can probably get into that.

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But yeah, you owe it to yourself to make sure that when that extra income is there, it's the age old thing, it's just diversification.

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If you keep piling your time, effort and money only into your own thing all those eggs in one basket it feels great and, by the way, that is the way to ultimate wealth, right?

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The wealthiest people in the world, of course, have most of their dollars in the company that they founded or work for, but when we're small, we have to diversify a little bit.

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So, yeah, as soon as things are clicking, make sure that you start with investing before you start to figure out all the tax benefit stuff you can do, because, again, if you just put money away in your retirement, you're saving 30, 40% of every dollar you put in there, regardless of what you invested in.

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Yeah, I'm glad that you point that out.

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It's something that I realized when I was a young entrepreneur.

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I started my first business at the age of 19 and I heard that English phrase of penny wise pound.

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Foolish Entrepreneurs will obsessively find a way to save a penny in order to, or which will hold them back from making a dollar.

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And so it's that cost cutting.

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We hear it from the traditional financial gurus of you know, don't buy that seven dollar Starbucks, as if that's going to magically appear.

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You're going to have a house down payment in a month from now, which obviously that stuff isn't real.

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But you're giving us the real stuff here today, rod, you're saying things like risk and diversification, which we've all heard before.

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Talk to us about the actual dynamics of it, because a lot of people we are risk takers as entrepreneurs, but you talked about private equity being one way to invest.

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What are those different types that should even be on our radar and that are worth us paying attention to?

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Well, again, once you have the foundation that I said and let's just, let's pick an avatar or a profile of somebody you are heads down loving your business, everything is going going well, and we know that that's not always the case by a long shot, but you have the ability to create that foundation Make sure you start with dollar cost averaging into low cost index funds and do that in a retirement setting.

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For the most part.

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That's your baseline.

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Once you have then maxed that out again, I'm going to talk my own book.

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As we say, in trading, most entrepreneurs, I think, are just going to want to gravitate more towards private equity, and here's why I mean we can all buy Apple or Nvidia or name your favorite stock.

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And again, if you're dollar cost averaging into an index fund, you already own that stuff, right?

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So, rather than trying to figure out or even now, crypto right, is Bitcoin going to go to this or to that?

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It doesn't really matter.

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How much more exciting is it to just go out and network in the world and find other people like yourself or anybody else who's starting businesses and just hear their pitches?

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And you know there's VCs, private equities, they've been around forever.

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They have all these different methodologies that they use to try to decide what to bet on and what to invest in.

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But really, unfortunately, what it is is it's just you put a little bit of money into 100 things and 90 of them don't work and 10 of them do.

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Most people don't have the opportunity to spread their investments across 100 different things.

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But if you put in place, hey, over the course of the next two years I'm going to go out and find five entrepreneurs in some sort of maybe a business I'm in, maybe a business I'm not very knowledgeable about, and see if I can invest in their companies.

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And again, we've all probably seen Shark Tank and things like that.

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If you're in early, you get some pretty good valuations for the risk that you're taking.

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So again, once you have the baseline, then I would move up to private equity.

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Don't let that scare you.

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That simply just means you know you can invest in my business if you want.

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I'm a private company.

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That's the idea.

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Just start with that.

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And most entrepreneurs have pretty good networks too and know bright, intelligent, motivated, aggressive people and see if you can invest with them.

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Yeah, rod, we already know where crypto is going, don't we?

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Isn't that what everyone says on X Going straight to the moon?

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Of course, yeah, let's talk about that actually, because I do feel and this is something that I find interesting Again it's it's so many things extrapolate into the world of entrepreneurship is that there's all these trends and there's all these fads.

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I remember NFTs were all the craze during the pandemic.

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I couldn't help but but shake my head and facepalm quite a bit.

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So, rod, I'm excited for your more professional opinion on all these things, but let's talk about the fads versus the foundations, because what you're coming at us with here today is find good businesses and invest in them, because good businesses have a tendency to grow.

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Talk to us about how to dispel and dismiss all the fads that pop up, and actually, is that the way?

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What are your thoughts on these fads that come and go?

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Actually, is that the way?

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What are your thoughts on these fads that come and go?

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Well, the first thing is it's difficult to avoid them, right?

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We all feel the word that.

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This was an acronym in my trading business only 20 years ago and now it's everywhere.

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Which is FOMO, the fear of missing out.

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We had other acronyms for it, Maybe they're a little bit less PG, but that seems to be all the rage these days.

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Right, and there used to be an investing approach, which was the moment you saw something on the cover of Time magazine or some big media publication.

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That was the time to sell, or when the's hard to avoid those shiny objects, because it seems like all you hear is how well everyone has done in all in all those things.

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But look, if you're an entrepreneur, you know how difficult it is to run a business, how difficult it is to time things, how much luck is sometimes involved in all those kinds of things.

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That that applies to the world of investing as well.

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So there's a good chance that, once you've heard about any of these things, um, that they've already passed you by in terms of being able to get an actual return for the risk that you're taking.

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And this is an important point, right.

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If you're going to take risks in, like private equity or in crypto or things like that, you need to have ability to calibrate what your return is.

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If I'm going to put $10,000 into some crazy small crypto, I probably am going to lose it all, but since it's crazy and small, I probably also have a chance to make 5x or 10x or whatever the case may be.

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So you have to understand your risk profile and who you are and how much money you can afford to lose.

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But the simple answer is if it's too good to be true or if you're hearing all about it, try to stay away from it.

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And if you're going to invest in riskier things, make sure they have a tremendous amount of upside, because the probability is that the investment might not work out.

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Yeah, I'm super grateful that you're coming on the show and sharing this with our listeners today, rod, because this is the real stuff we crave these conversations here on this podcast, that's what listeners are used to.

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So this is the real stuff cutting through the noise.

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I feel like with social media, we hear about a different fad every single day.

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But there's one disclaimer, because you you said this word the term too late, and I know that that's an objection.

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It's quite frankly, I think it's an objection to most things in life.

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People don't start their podcast because they believe they're too late.

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They don't start their YouTube channel.

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They don't start their business.

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People are always afraid that they're too late to the party when the reality is.

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I've always loved that as a finance major and undergrad, I've always loved that simple phrase of time in the market beats timing the market.

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Can you talk about that, rod?

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It's something we've never touched on on this podcast.

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You nailed it.

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I mean.

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A lot of the time the adages don't have much wisdom in them, but that one certainly does.

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So we can take both those things away.

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The greatest trading strategy of all time if you can even call it a strategy, it's just a tactic is DCA, just dollar cost average.

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And then the next C is compound Put the money in, put it in consistently, then you don't care about the price.

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And to your point, brian, then you're not trying to time necessarily the market, you're putting in the same amount of money.

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And, by the way, once we become entrepreneurs and we're not working for the man or the woman or whatever, or the corporate culture in that world, we don't have access to a lot of those programs.

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We have to set them up for ourselves.

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We have to learn about how much we can contribute ourselves and how we can take care of our employees if we have them as well.

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So there's a lot of education just on getting the foundation.

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But once the foundation is there, you just it is KISS, you just keep it simple, keep it so simple.

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And then dollar cost average, because you can time things in the short term.

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Absolutely, I want to really make sure that people understand that if you want to more actively get involved in markets, you can certainly learn how to look at charts and certainly understand how to buy things at better times, but that is only after you have the whole foundation.

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So I didn't want to necessarily say don't start or it's passed you by.

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I'm just referring to once.

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Everyone is talking about NVIDIA, which is probably a company no one even heard of two or three years ago.

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That's probably a little late for you to pile into a name like that, but make sure you're investing every month, because there's a good chance now you're buying a little NVIDIA because that will be in all the indexes.

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Yeah, I love that overview.

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I'm going to bring up another common objection, and I'm sure that you hear this more than I do, but I ask it to all of our guests who come on, when they talk about marketing and they talk about how you can effectively have ad campaigns.

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And that's the question, the objection how much does it cost?

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How much do I need to start this stuff, rod?

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It's the concern of so many people, especially when we have our businesses that we're investing in, we have marketing that we're investing in.

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How much do we need to actually start making money that's worthwhile when it comes to investing?

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Yeah, and that's a question I get asked all the time, especially since what Traders Dev Group is is a little bit more on the active side.

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So that's the risk capital side.

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So people want to make sure that they understand how much they could potentially be putting at risk if they get involved.

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Look, that is probably something to go through with other trusted financial advisors, or however you might be funding your business, to understand exactly where capital should be deployed relative to your business, relative exactly where capital should be deployed relative to your business, relative to your employees and, of course, then relative to you and your family and things like that.

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So the situation is going to vary, but there's just like you said, there's no time like the present to start.

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Even if it's a small amount, it doesn't matter.

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And if it's a much larger amount, then you really need to start, because you're paying taxes on all that money that you are not sheltering.

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And again, I'm not talking about wild offshore trusts, I'm just talking about there's only really two tax havens left in this world, and they're mostly retirement plans and real estate.

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So you got to be involved in one of those two things pretty heavily if you want to shelter yourself from taxes and, as I've already mentioned before, if you're in a high income tax bracket, the moment you put money into one of those programs, don't even worry about what you're going to invest it in.

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I mean, it could literally just be in cash.

00:16:58.803 --> 00:17:04.083
You've already saved quite a bit of money in present value on your taxes.

00:17:04.083 --> 00:17:05.365
Of course, you do pay taxes later on.

00:17:05.365 --> 00:17:05.965
We take it out.

00:17:05.965 --> 00:17:07.788
We don't have to get into all the nitty detail.

00:17:07.788 --> 00:17:09.510
But short answer, brian.

00:17:09.510 --> 00:17:14.827
There's no time like the present to start get that foundation going, and it doesn't matter if it's a dollar or a million dollars.

00:17:15.471 --> 00:17:17.078
Yeah, it's my favorite Chinese proverb.

00:17:17.078 --> 00:17:18.963
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.

00:17:18.963 --> 00:17:20.769
The second best time is right now.

00:17:20.769 --> 00:17:21.832
I think it's so powerful.

00:17:22.480 --> 00:17:23.622
Rod, I want to ask you this question.

00:17:23.622 --> 00:17:35.105
It's something that you and I didn't talk about off air, but obviously you are one of us, you are a fellow entrepreneur and, with that in mind, we all have different formats and styles for how we manage our business cashflow, which obviously cash is king.

00:17:35.105 --> 00:17:37.353
There's a reason why we have that phrase in business.

00:17:37.353 --> 00:17:40.007
For me personally, I love the profit first approach.

00:17:40.007 --> 00:17:49.744
So every single week, when all of our payments come through, I have X percentage distributed to owner's pay, x percent distributed to operating expenses, x percent distributed to taxes.

00:17:49.744 --> 00:17:52.028
What's your insight and advice there?

00:17:52.028 --> 00:17:55.335
As a fellow entrepreneur, how can we manage that stuff?

00:17:55.335 --> 00:17:58.188
Because we're making decisions about what to do with all of our money.

00:17:58.188 --> 00:17:59.451
Is it a percentage?

00:17:59.451 --> 00:18:02.467
You talked about the importance of compounding and consistency.

00:18:02.467 --> 00:18:04.412
Is it a percentage we should look at?

00:18:04.412 --> 00:18:08.548
Is it a takeout after your life expenses, your business expenses?

00:18:08.548 --> 00:18:11.013
How do you navigate those waters with new investors?

00:18:12.259 --> 00:18:22.528
Yeah, I mean I think that when it comes to profits that are happening on investments made, there is really no substitution for compounding.

00:18:22.528 --> 00:18:25.566
If you're more on the passive side, just let the money continue to work.

00:18:25.566 --> 00:18:35.451
If you're a little bit more active and again you have an interest or passion about it, you can learn how to time things a little bit better and distribute.

00:18:35.451 --> 00:18:37.022
That's when it comes to investing.

00:18:37.022 --> 00:18:46.492
If you're referring more towards cash flow or cash management or reinvesting back into business, I think that really depends so much on the business.

00:18:46.492 --> 00:19:03.630
The magic formula that I'm sure a lot of your entrepreneurs are trying to solve for and that we've kind of solved for, is what is the net present value of kind of our portfolio and what we could potentially invest in or where we could allocate money, and then what is the lifetime value of our customers and then how much it costs.

00:19:03.630 --> 00:19:07.464
It's the same stuff that Cuban, they all nail people on the shark tank, right?

00:19:07.464 --> 00:19:07.846
What is it?

00:19:07.846 --> 00:19:10.730
What does it cost for you to acquire a customer?

00:19:10.730 --> 00:19:22.269
Because then if you can tweak that and know that you can invest this or that or this and this in these various sales and marketing efforts, it almost becomes a little silly to make sure that that's not the engine that you're always feeding right.

00:19:22.569 --> 00:19:24.682
The lead engine is what you always want to be feeding.

00:19:24.682 --> 00:19:26.124
That's the lifeblood of a business.

00:19:26.124 --> 00:19:38.465
Many businesses get to a point where they plateau because the owners and the operators are just super burned out on the hamster wheel of trying to constantly get that new business in the door.

00:19:38.465 --> 00:19:45.336
That's why you want to invest now in trying to figure out those magic formulas, depending on what your sales and marketing tool.

00:19:45.336 --> 00:19:51.744
Ours is all done online and we have a very good sense of exactly what we'll get back for every dollar that we spend.

00:19:51.744 --> 00:19:58.768
And if that return is higher than a return that you can get elsewhere, that's probably where you want to be investing your money.

00:19:59.269 --> 00:20:07.285
Yeah, rod, we're going to talk in a second about you actually trading and people getting to actually watch you trade, because I think it's so cool the way that you operate with your business.

00:20:07.285 --> 00:20:11.333
But you've already alluded to a few different ingredients that go behind a business's success.

00:20:11.333 --> 00:20:14.808
And, speaking of Shark Tank, you're right, there are some that succeed and some that don't succeed.

00:20:14.808 --> 00:20:32.459
With your experienced eyes, with a lot of experience in trading and valuing companies and seeing what's going to grow, what are some of those variables that you're looking at with regards to finding the next Lululemon, when you put that comfortable pair of joggers on and you think to yourself gosh, this is a great product, it's got a great price point.

00:20:32.459 --> 00:20:33.883
What are some of those variables you look?

00:20:34.022 --> 00:20:34.083
at.

00:20:34.083 --> 00:20:45.292
Well, I can just give you an example of some of the companies that I invested in myself, and it was really just driven by a real love of the product when I tried it.

00:20:45.292 --> 00:20:48.027
So one of them an example is called Beloit Kombucha.

00:20:48.027 --> 00:20:48.548
It's a.

00:20:48.548 --> 00:20:52.326
So I have Crohn's, which is a digestive disorder that can cause inflammation.

00:20:52.787 --> 00:20:57.526
Many, many people have a gut or or issues with their digestive system.

00:20:57.526 --> 00:21:05.342
It's kind of become the you know, remember, when you could eat a slice, a whole loaf of bread and then you couldn't eat a whole loaf of bread and you're supposed to eat gluten or you're not supposed to eat gluten.

00:21:05.342 --> 00:21:12.872
It has become the rage of health is discussing diets as it refers to gut health.

00:21:12.872 --> 00:21:14.954
Anyway, I didn't like kombucha.

00:21:14.954 --> 00:21:16.115
I thought it tasted bad.

00:21:16.115 --> 00:21:17.423
It tastes like vinegar.

00:21:17.423 --> 00:21:22.324
It had a lot of calories, actually a decent amount of calories, 100, 150 calories.

00:21:22.324 --> 00:21:29.145
It came in big bottles, you had to keep it cold and it had a lot of sugar in it, which is not good for your gut.

00:21:30.601 --> 00:21:41.951
I found my way to a company that had created a formulation of powdered kombucha so similar to like a liquid IV, and I just loved the product and it hit close to home and it was shelf-stable.

00:21:41.951 --> 00:21:44.628
It came in little stick forms instead of a bottle.

00:21:44.628 --> 00:21:51.061
It only had one gram of sugar, all the gut benefits and the probiotics of regular kombucha.

00:21:51.061 --> 00:22:00.048
So when I saw all those things combined now, I knew nothing about the powder beverage market or the beverage market or consumers, packaged goods or anything.

00:22:00.048 --> 00:22:04.634
I was a guy that could look at screens and sort of push buttons and make money.

00:22:04.653 --> 00:22:07.105
That took me 30 years to figure it out, but I figured it out.

00:22:07.105 --> 00:22:11.042
So I also liked the challenge of that particular business.

00:22:11.042 --> 00:22:20.231
But yeah, I think it starts with none of this hasn't been said many, many times what is the product, what's the management or the people behind it?

00:22:20.231 --> 00:22:24.393
And then, ultimately, is it unique or what's the business opportunity?

00:22:24.393 --> 00:22:27.422
And Beloit Kombucha really checked all those boxes for me.

00:22:27.422 --> 00:22:32.653
So now I'm pretty excited to be kind of on my way to being a majority owner of the company.

00:22:33.074 --> 00:22:33.895
That's incredible, Rod.

00:22:33.895 --> 00:22:39.248
That's something I actually didn't know before we hit record here today, and as someone who lived in Los Angeles for quite some time.

00:22:39.248 --> 00:22:45.663
It's all the rage and it's something that I saw in LA and now, as I travel around the country, Kombucha is making a wave.

00:22:45.663 --> 00:22:46.403
I mean, isn't it?

00:22:46.403 --> 00:22:48.886
We call the gut the second brain these days, Like it is?

00:22:48.926 --> 00:22:51.509
Yeah exactly, it's the second brain.

00:22:51.509 --> 00:22:53.852
That's what it says on our little, uh, our little white paper.

00:22:53.852 --> 00:22:54.071
Yeah.

00:22:54.252 --> 00:22:55.114
Yeah, I love it.

00:22:55.114 --> 00:22:55.974
Yeah, and that's sweet.

00:22:55.974 --> 00:23:06.250
And again going back to my college days professors telling us to pull all these annual reports and quarterly filings from the SEC's website.

00:23:06.250 --> 00:23:06.671
You're right.

00:23:06.671 --> 00:23:07.472
As customers, we know things, we.

00:23:07.472 --> 00:23:19.291
When I bought my Tesla I guess it was six years ago, again living in Southern California I recognized this is an incredible car and, sure enough, the stock has done me quite well over the past few years, so it's cool to see great products have a tendency to grow.

00:23:19.759 --> 00:23:22.594
Speaking of which, rod, I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs.

00:23:22.594 --> 00:23:24.842
We have a lot of incredible entrepreneurs here on the show.

00:23:24.842 --> 00:23:39.884
Very rarely do I see some with the freaking reviews that your business has, because what you're doing with Traders Dev Group is honestly incredible the way that you're delivering financial education, but also your attitude towards the fact that in order to learn it, you have to actually do it.

00:23:39.884 --> 00:23:45.385
Talk to us about Traders Dev Group, because people who are listening to this they haven't seen your business the way that I have.

00:23:45.385 --> 00:23:48.849
How does Traders Dev Group work and what is this about?

00:23:48.849 --> 00:23:51.423
Your live streams every single trading day.

00:23:52.586 --> 00:23:52.806
Yeah.

00:23:52.806 --> 00:23:56.664
So the first thing, we started this conversation talking a little bit about investing.

00:23:56.664 --> 00:24:03.448
I want to make it very clear that there is a difference between active trading on short-term timeframes and investing.

00:24:03.448 --> 00:24:19.690
So Traders Dev Group is mostly a trading organization active trading organization where the goal is to teach people how to look at markets and extract daily or weekly income from the markets, doing something that everyone says is not possible, which is you can't day trade, you can't.

00:24:19.690 --> 00:24:22.486
That's for gamblers, that's that's you know, super high risk.

00:24:22.486 --> 00:24:23.730
Everyone's going to lose all their money.

00:24:23.730 --> 00:24:24.800
Yada, yada, yada.

00:24:25.201 --> 00:24:31.201
So so the traders dev group is a trading organization and, um, what I came up with is I.

00:24:31.201 --> 00:24:43.443
I was like the only way people are ever going to learn this is not only by doing, but by doing it, while also watching me do it every single day in front of them, with my screens up, with every single position.

00:24:43.443 --> 00:24:45.829
They want to ask a question about my thought process.

00:24:45.829 --> 00:24:51.711
I'll tell them exactly what I was thinking and why I was doing things, and everybody is in a completely different spot.

00:24:51.711 --> 00:24:58.405
Like when someone joins our group, it's like walking into the middle of the movie, because we have hundreds of traders who've been with me for five plus years.

00:24:58.405 --> 00:25:01.557
They know everything, they help out and all those types of things.

00:25:01.557 --> 00:25:05.462
But really what it's all about is it's skill development.

00:25:05.462 --> 00:25:06.564
Trading is a skill.

00:25:06.564 --> 00:25:08.246
Active speculation is a skill.

00:25:08.246 --> 00:25:11.489
You're making the best decisions you can with incomplete information.

00:25:11.489 --> 00:25:14.752
So the only way to develop that skill is by practice.

00:25:14.752 --> 00:25:15.593
But here's the key.

00:25:15.593 --> 00:25:18.876
Here's the key to Trader's Dev Group Not just willy-nilly practice.

00:25:18.876 --> 00:25:27.811
Right, you could sit down at the piano and play your scales all the time, but until you actually probably worked with somebody, you could get some of this from a video.

00:25:27.811 --> 00:25:43.270
But until you really got a piano teacher who teaches you how to deliberately practice, how to make each practice section actually improve your skill, that's what we're all about at Traders Dev Group, and we now have 400 or 500 people that tune in almost every single day.

00:25:43.270 --> 00:25:44.924
We're hoping to continue to grow that community.

00:25:45.267 --> 00:25:51.544
And one last thing is that we actually trade this futures market, which is something a lot of people don't understand or know about.

00:25:51.544 --> 00:25:53.789
Everyone understands sort of stocks.

00:25:53.789 --> 00:25:59.797
Let me, if I can, distill anything to the audience here do not trade stocks.

00:25:59.797 --> 00:26:03.330
I know that's going to be blasphemy to some people, especially stock traders that are pretty good at it.

00:26:03.330 --> 00:26:05.135
Do not trade stocks.

00:26:05.135 --> 00:26:07.181
Stocks are meant for investing.

00:26:07.280 --> 00:26:10.656
Where we started the conversation, you were buying a part of a company.

00:26:10.656 --> 00:26:12.240
Let that company grow for you.

00:26:12.240 --> 00:26:13.412
Let it pay you dividends.

00:26:13.412 --> 00:26:14.375
Don't ever sell it.

00:26:14.375 --> 00:26:16.424
If you get a big winner, just hold on to it.

00:26:16.424 --> 00:26:17.790
That's what stocks are about.

00:26:17.790 --> 00:26:21.719
The futures markets actually exist for day trading.

00:26:21.719 --> 00:26:24.203
They are liquidity providers of speculation.

00:26:24.203 --> 00:26:30.363
So we are actually trading the things that were invented by the financial markets to be traded.

00:26:30.363 --> 00:26:41.580
So if you know nothing about futures, you go to cmegroupcom that's cmegroupcom, and this has nothing to do with me or my company and just learn about the power of futures, especially if you're interested in things like more short-term trading.

00:26:41.580 --> 00:26:43.079
Just learn about the power of futures, especially if you're interested in things like more short-term trading.

00:26:43.750 --> 00:26:52.036
Yeah, rod gosh, I love that overview and I already knew you could probably do a multiple-day thesis teaching everybody and a dissertation on all of these things.

00:26:52.036 --> 00:26:52.679
That's absolutely true.

00:26:52.679 --> 00:26:56.842
So I really appreciate you dropping these real-life resources for people to go deeper into.

00:26:56.842 --> 00:27:08.732
But it is fun also to hear your entrepreneurial insights, because you just said hundreds of members tuning in and as someone who has read the reviews extensively of your business, it actually seems like a community you give the example of.

00:27:08.732 --> 00:27:15.540
There are guides who have been there for years with you that welcome new people and help answer questions, and you're obviously on there to help answer questions.

00:27:15.540 --> 00:27:21.936
Give us some insights there, because as a practitioner, you've been a successful investor and trader for a long time.

00:27:21.936 --> 00:27:27.520
What was that transition like, actually starting your business and helping others to get into the world of trading as well?

00:27:28.509 --> 00:27:42.913
Well, that's a great question, because it was rough for the first 10 years, and the thing that made it rough was that, until about five years ago, the products that we traded the way they were structured, was when they would move.

00:27:42.913 --> 00:27:44.696
It was quite a bit of money.

00:27:44.696 --> 00:27:54.595
So just think of it this way If you owned a stock, we were trading things that were very expensive stocks.

00:27:54.595 --> 00:27:56.261
They weren't stocks, but they just had a lot of leverage built in.

00:27:56.261 --> 00:27:57.145
So it was very difficult initially.

00:27:57.145 --> 00:27:59.034
The same trading style, same kind of thing.

00:27:59.034 --> 00:28:01.484
We didn't have the room running every single day.

00:28:02.086 --> 00:28:10.500
But what's happened in the last five years starting in 2019, is the futures markets started to introduce a product that was one-tenth the size, which is great.

00:28:10.500 --> 00:28:13.531
That means it's one-tenth the risk, it's one-tenth the movement.

00:28:13.531 --> 00:28:17.682
So you can think about this the old product would be $100 every time it moved.

00:28:17.682 --> 00:28:20.499
This new product's only $10 or $1.

00:28:20.499 --> 00:28:28.041
So a lot of people just feel and myself included when I'm teaching people we feel so much more comfortable with smaller numbers while we're learning right.

00:28:28.041 --> 00:28:42.301
So that was the first thing is that we now have these smaller products, that they're not demo, they're real products, but you can learn in a way in which you're not looking at a big scary number on the screen with the fear and greed and all those types of things going on.

00:28:42.301 --> 00:28:45.958
Number on the screen with the fear and greed and all those types of things going on.

00:28:45.958 --> 00:28:46.579
So that was a major help.

00:28:46.579 --> 00:28:57.076
And then the second thing I finally realized is I'm just going to every time someone asks about the strategy or the stop or what the target or I think something's going to go up or down, I'm just going to say what is your daily risk budget?

00:28:57.076 --> 00:28:58.499
That's all I care about.

00:28:58.499 --> 00:29:00.082
I can teach you all of this in a second.

00:29:00.624 --> 00:29:06.234
If you had $5,000, you would be able to risk about $250 in my room every day.

00:29:06.234 --> 00:29:07.518
That's it Hard.

00:29:07.518 --> 00:29:11.011
Stop, you're down, $250, you hit the close button, you're done for the day.

00:29:11.011 --> 00:29:14.521
I know it sounds simple, but that's all you have to learn how to do.

00:29:14.521 --> 00:29:18.539
You could push buttons like a drunk monkey and get completely lucky.

00:29:18.539 --> 00:29:23.791
Sometimes it'll go up, sometimes it'll go down.

00:29:23.791 --> 00:29:26.117
If you never violate your daily risk budget, you'll stay in the game long enough to learn how it works.

00:29:26.117 --> 00:29:35.797
That was the big change, because what we could do and I'll shut up in just a second I'm rambling but since the products were smaller, we could trade a lot more within our daily risk budget.

00:29:35.797 --> 00:29:38.852
In the old way, our daily risk budget was $250.

00:29:38.852 --> 00:29:42.820
You could lose that in five seconds if the market went against you.

00:29:42.820 --> 00:29:47.339
Now you have more time to learn, to stay in the game and to deliberately practice.

00:29:47.842 --> 00:29:48.483
Yeah, Rod.

00:29:48.483 --> 00:29:55.342
Well, for sure, this episode is going to be blacklisted by every casino around the world, because it's the opposite of what they.

00:29:55.342 --> 00:29:56.752
I don't have an edge in the casino.

00:29:57.756 --> 00:29:58.478
You don't have an edge.

00:29:58.478 --> 00:30:01.953
Yeah, make sure you get a lot of free drinks before you go broke.

00:30:01.953 --> 00:30:04.820
That's how you eat yourself even.

00:30:05.542 --> 00:30:06.806
Yeah, I hear you on that.

00:30:06.806 --> 00:30:13.061
I think it's fascinating because it's something that, again, as an economics and finance major and undergrad, it's something that I've long known.

00:30:13.061 --> 00:30:17.422
This is a huge opportunity but for one reason or another, we don't encourage it societally.

00:30:17.422 --> 00:30:28.816
So my question to you, rod, is and this is also a little bit of insight into understanding your customer sticking with our theme of entrepreneur to entrepreneur, having this conversation, talk to us about the people who are within the group.

00:30:28.816 --> 00:30:29.818
Who are they?

00:30:29.818 --> 00:30:30.981
Is this their business?

00:30:30.981 --> 00:30:31.872
Is this their livelihood?

00:30:31.872 --> 00:30:34.780
Is this their full-time income or what do their lives look like?

00:30:35.931 --> 00:30:41.355
One thing that I absolutely love about what we built at Traders Dev Group is the diversity of people.

00:30:41.355 --> 00:30:46.536
Typically trading education or active trading education looked a lot more like me.

00:30:46.536 --> 00:31:09.192
It was skewed, very, very heavily male and very, very 50 plus, and generally it was people men that had retirement savings or other money and just had gambled it on their own and lost $20,000 or $50,000 or $100,000 trying to trade and they finally say, oh, I better go figure out if there's a way that I can do this or at least lose less money.

00:31:09.192 --> 00:31:16.854
The community we've built is so diverse, and it's diverse also because the cost to get involved.

00:31:16.854 --> 00:31:21.103
We have programs where we will actually provide the funding for you.

00:31:21.103 --> 00:31:29.010
So if you demonstrate that you are proficient at this and you really want to have a go at this, you don't ever have to risk a dime of your own capital.

00:31:29.010 --> 00:31:30.694
You don't have to pay us a subscription.

00:31:30.694 --> 00:31:31.958
You have to pay to learn.

00:31:31.958 --> 00:31:37.103
It's not a free lunch, but because of that we have people from all over the world.

00:31:37.103 --> 00:31:47.894
We have people of all different types of backgrounds and the typical sort of 50 plus male is still about 50% of our group, but it's not 90% of our group.

00:31:47.894 --> 00:31:49.377
So very, very diverse.

00:31:50.800 --> 00:32:00.594
I get super excited when I hear about somebody in maybe Asia or Africa where you can trade with our group, and you know the dollars go a lot further in some of those countries.

00:32:00.673 --> 00:32:06.403
So someone might have a profit objective of $500 for the day in our group.

00:32:06.403 --> 00:32:11.958
That person who makes $500 over the course of that week, that's changing their lives over there.

00:32:11.958 --> 00:32:24.200
So in terms of who's professional or what people's goals are, I always try to set the expectation that for at least three to five years and this drives some people crazy because I can accelerate I'm there every day.

00:32:24.200 --> 00:32:27.376
You're a great teacher, I'm going to leapfrog a few of these steps.

00:32:27.376 --> 00:32:32.438
Okay, fine, but for three to five years your objection should be the first year, how not to lose.

00:32:32.438 --> 00:32:35.175
Years two to three, how to supplement your income.

00:32:35.175 --> 00:32:40.134
And then years three and beyond, how to really complement and take your income to the next level.

00:32:40.134 --> 00:32:46.788
So a little bit of everything, but we do have some people that are now officially full-time and some of the screenshots that we see.

00:32:46.788 --> 00:32:54.791
I get all choked up about it because some big numbers that some people in our group are putting up and it's just fantastic to see.

00:32:55.334 --> 00:32:56.276
Yeah, I love that.

00:32:56.276 --> 00:33:00.894
Listeners, I'm going to call this out for each and every single one of you is that we all feel this way.

00:33:00.894 --> 00:33:07.285
Myself, I feel this way when we hear from you, listeners, that you went full time in your business or you just locked in your biggest client.

00:33:07.285 --> 00:33:08.794
You want to celebrate that with someone.

00:33:08.794 --> 00:33:12.151
Myself, I feel that, rod, clearly you feel that with your clients.

00:33:12.151 --> 00:33:27.260
So, listeners, no matter where you are in the world, no matter where you are in your journey, no matter what your life or personal or business or financial circumstances are in your situation is, you are the ones that people love to serve, and Rod is out there literally every single day.

00:33:27.340 --> 00:33:30.873
Rod, I don't know if people give you enough credit for live streaming every single day.

00:33:30.873 --> 00:33:34.141
That is no easy feat, so huge kudos to you.

00:33:34.141 --> 00:33:36.576
I want to ask you this question as we come towards the end.

00:33:36.576 --> 00:33:37.339
I really mean it.

00:33:37.339 --> 00:33:46.877
You could probably do a year long class on all of this which you do do in your business, which I think is incredible, but that is looking at time horizon for someone like you.

00:33:46.877 --> 00:33:48.181
You're growing your business.

00:33:48.181 --> 00:33:51.803
You're also growing your portfolio and helping others grow their portfolios.

00:33:51.803 --> 00:33:53.529
Where is your time horizon?

00:33:53.529 --> 00:34:09.751
Look, I always hear different insights from entrepreneurs as far as looking out a month, six months a year, people who work on quarterly basis, people who have a 10 year plan, what's your take on future looking?

00:34:09.771 --> 00:34:11.976
growth and how do you navigate that as the CEO of your business and as a trader?

00:34:11.976 --> 00:34:25.355
Yeah, it's a great question, especially when it comes to there's a lot of people that believe that really active trading and only eating what you kill every day on the screens or whatever, is a younger person's game, and I feel some of that.

00:34:25.355 --> 00:34:29.661
The ability to sort of sit or focus and all those things change as you get older.

00:34:29.661 --> 00:34:32.818
But I haven't set any particular timeline.

00:34:32.818 --> 00:34:34.958
I think I fall into that category.

00:34:34.958 --> 00:34:38.420
You've mentioned a couple of good zingers, words of wisdom.

00:34:38.420 --> 00:34:55.065
It's just if you really love and enjoy what you're doing and I know this can just make people's skin crawl if they're in that tough part of their entrepreneurial journey where, like, I want to be my own boss and I want the freedom and I know I can do this and I love my product, and it's just you know you're just getting smashed in the face all the time.

00:34:55.065 --> 00:35:05.855
I get it, I understand, but you can get to this point of a flow state and when you're in that flow state it really doesn't feel like work and I feel like I'm kind of in that.

00:35:05.855 --> 00:35:13.860
I'm in that with Traders Dev Group right now and I've diversified into other things that I know nothing about.

00:35:13.860 --> 00:35:19.182
So I'm constantly learning when it comes to those businesses and that keeps me really engage.

00:35:19.182 --> 00:35:21.003
So I really don't have any long-term plans.

00:35:21.023 --> 00:35:27.867
The one thing I did do over the course of the year is just graduated some of my best.

00:35:27.867 --> 00:35:29.248
I don't like to call them students.

00:35:29.248 --> 00:35:31.860
I like to call them collaborators or community members.

00:35:31.860 --> 00:35:34.791
We call them TDGers, that's Traders, dev Group TDGers.

00:35:34.791 --> 00:35:40.172
So now we have four or five that are really on the verge of being able to take over the reins.

00:35:40.172 --> 00:35:49.155
If I sleep in one day or can't quite make it, they can run the room and everyone enjoys seeing a slightly different style and hearing a slightly different voice.

00:35:49.155 --> 00:35:58.400
So we have some legacy stuff that's probably going to go away, stuff that I do, and some new blood coming in there transitions.

00:35:58.400 --> 00:36:01.760
So I don't have any really long-term plans for anything.

00:36:01.760 --> 00:36:02.813
I enjoy what I'm doing right now.

00:36:02.813 --> 00:36:03.516
We're going to stick with it.

00:36:03.916 --> 00:36:06.990
Yeah, I love that, rod.

00:36:06.990 --> 00:36:12.219
I'll confess to you publicly here that I intentionally asked that question of entrepreneurs because more and more people are in our boat.

00:36:12.219 --> 00:36:17.817
I think when I was in college, a lot of business school professors were preaching you know, have a five-year plan, a 10-year plan.

00:36:17.817 --> 00:36:19.737
But I think this is the reality.

00:36:19.737 --> 00:36:24.349
I think this is the reality these conversations that you and I are having here is that keep serving people and keep seeing that evolve.

00:36:24.349 --> 00:36:26.076
I think evolution is the name of the game.

00:36:26.076 --> 00:36:26.898
You're showing it there.

00:36:26.898 --> 00:36:28.275
Your services will evolve.

00:36:28.329 --> 00:36:34.396
It's so cool that you have students or community members who graduate and can step into those roles and people see that different perspective.

00:36:34.396 --> 00:36:36.498
So huge kudos to you and what you've built.

00:36:36.498 --> 00:36:41.717
And I always love asking this question at the end of our interviews because I don't know which direction you're going to take it in.

00:36:41.717 --> 00:36:58.389
And that is what's your one piece of advice Knowing that we're being listened to from thousands of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in over 150 countries at all different stages of growth or just at the beginning of their growth journeys with your entrepreneurial hat on, what's that one thing that you hope they take away from today's episode?

00:36:58.449 --> 00:37:14.177
I'm going to go a little woo-woo on you and I won't tell you exactly how to do this practice, but I have taken my health as a major priority, even when things get totally crazy, because a little bit of my condition, I just always had to prioritize health.

00:37:14.177 --> 00:37:29.311
And one thing that I had known about for 30 years you know 30 years was meditation or a meditative practice and for whatever reason, I just never, which is wild, because in my business there's a gentleman named Ray Dalio who's about as big as it gets.

00:37:29.311 --> 00:37:30.815
He's one of the biggest hedge fund managers.

00:37:30.815 --> 00:37:41.952
Fascinating guy, major philanthropist, really, really fascinating gentleman and he's been doing this one particular style of meditation and talking about it for like for as long way back when I was at Merrill Lynch.

00:37:43.614 --> 00:38:04.373
So over the last couple of years, since the pandemic, I've really integrated that in and if I could leave, especially for everybody in life, but for entrepreneurs and things, just to be able to have a practice that can calm your mind and get you more back to your core, because all this stuff that is entrepreneur.

00:38:04.373 --> 00:38:08.286
I mean, if you want to ever know whether you're starting to get it down, close your eyes and try to have an entrepreneur's mind shut off for a little while.

00:38:08.286 --> 00:38:10.956
It's super hard, like really hard.

00:38:10.956 --> 00:38:13.260
There are a lot of great apps.

00:38:13.260 --> 00:38:15.532
There's a lot of great things that people can look into.

00:38:15.532 --> 00:38:24.137
I happen to use one called TM, but it's been life-changing for me and I never miss a session, so it took it in a different direction, like you said.

00:38:24.559 --> 00:38:26.983
No, it is, and that's why I love that question, and it's super actionable.

00:38:26.983 --> 00:38:30.340
And this is the real insights into the mind of an entrepreneur, not just a trader.

00:38:30.340 --> 00:38:32.117
So, rod, I so appreciate those insights.

00:38:32.117 --> 00:38:38.114
But I also know that listeners will probably be very keen to see what all the magic is inside of Trader's Dev Group.

00:38:38.114 --> 00:38:43.204
So for listeners who want to go deeper into all this great stuff that you're putting into the world, drop those links on us.

00:38:43.204 --> 00:38:44.693
Where should they go from here?

00:38:45.697 --> 00:38:47.737
Right, so hopefully we'll put them in the show notes as well.

00:38:47.737 --> 00:38:56.420
But it's Traders Dev Group, that's D-E-V, and then group Traders Dev Group and just hit the big blue button in the middle of the screen that says get started for free.

00:38:56.420 --> 00:38:58.516
I don't give you some crappy e-book.

00:38:58.516 --> 00:39:08.775
You're not on some newsletter.

00:39:08.775 --> 00:39:09.079
We'll all spam you.

00:39:09.079 --> 00:39:12.235
You're going to get access to a 30 video course 30 video course that you don't have to know anything about, anything that we just talked about.

00:39:12.235 --> 00:39:13.253
The video course is completely free.

00:39:13.253 --> 00:39:14.293
Just start there and you'll also be able to calibrate.

00:39:14.293 --> 00:39:19.931
If you're interested in what I'm talking about, then maybe looking more into Traders Dev Group or Actively Tradings for you.

00:39:19.931 --> 00:39:27.797
If you're not, then you kind of know hey, I'm going to go back to dollar cost averaging and go over here, run my business and just get the foundation started that Rod talked about.

00:39:27.797 --> 00:39:30.931
But TradersDevGroupcom hit the get started for free button.

00:39:31.271 --> 00:39:33.217
Yes, listeners, you already know the drill.

00:39:33.217 --> 00:39:37.934
We are making it as easy as possible for you to find a link to Rod's business website at Traders Dev Group.

00:39:37.934 --> 00:39:39.155
So definitely check the show notes.

00:39:39.155 --> 00:39:44.222
You don't have to remember the link, just click right on through, no matter where it is that you're tuning into today's episode.

00:39:44.222 --> 00:39:48.757
And he's not kidding when he says his website is so simple for you to get started.

00:39:48.757 --> 00:39:51.813
It is literally right in the middle of the screen Get started for free.

00:39:51.813 --> 00:39:53.177
So take him up on that.

00:39:53.177 --> 00:39:54.581
It's going to give you those free insights.

00:39:54.581 --> 00:39:59.938
So, rod, on behalf of myself and all the listeners worldwide, thanks so much for joining us on the show today.

00:39:59.938 --> 00:40:01.539
Thanks, it was great being here.

00:40:01.539 --> 00:40:02.300
I appreciate the time.

00:40:02.961 --> 00:40:08.514
Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the wantrepreneur to entrepreneur podcast.

00:40:08.514 --> 00:40:12.449
If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.

00:40:12.449 --> 00:40:21.702
Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at the wantrepreneurshowcom, and I just want to give a shout out to our amazing guests.

00:40:21.702 --> 00:40:32.744
There's a reason why we are ad free and have produced so many incredible episodes five days a week for you, and it's because our guests step up to the plate.

00:40:32.744 --> 00:40:33.527
These are not sponsored episodes.

00:40:33.527 --> 00:40:34.130
These are not infomercials.

00:40:34.130 --> 00:40:37.641
Our guests help us cover the costs of our productions.

00:40:37.641 --> 00:40:48.601
They so deeply believe in the power of getting their message out in front of you, awesome entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, that they contribute to help us make these productions possible.

00:40:48.601 --> 00:40:57.077
So thank you to not only today's guests, but all of our guests in general, and I just want to invite you check out our website, because you can send us a voicemail there.

00:40:57.318 --> 00:40:58.440
We also have live chat.

00:40:58.440 --> 00:41:01.539
If you want to interact directly with me, go to thewantrepreneurshowcom.

00:41:01.539 --> 00:41:01.961
Initiate a live chat.

00:41:01.961 --> 00:41:03.568
If you want to interact directly with me, go to thewantrepreneurshowcom.

00:41:03.568 --> 00:41:04.471
Initiate a live chat.

00:41:04.471 --> 00:41:13.864
It's for real me, and I'm excited because I'll see you, as always every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.